A Series of Unfortunate Events

My business trip started out pretty well. In fact, much better than I could have hoped. I had found the absolute most perfect parking space in one of the airport’s outdoor parking lots.

As an aside, when my trip took place, the John Glenn International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, was simply the Port Columbus Airport. How can they seriously use “international” in the name of an airport that has a direct flight to a total of three cities outside the U.S.? Toronto, Cancun and Punta Cana. That’s it. Come on. The Columbus airport is a wannabe-international airport with illusions of grandeur. (I remember a thing or two from freshman psychology.) A better name would be the John Glenn Intranational Airport. Okay, now, back to my story. Sorry I trailed off.

Anyway, the airport (at the time) has two outdoor parking lots – the red one and the blue one. Shuttle stop shelters are sprinkled within each parking lot. I always find it easier to park as close to a shelter as possible not only because it means I have fewer steps to take to get from my car to the shelter, but also because it makes it much easier to find my car when I return from my trips. When travelers park in one of these lots, they are expected to unload their luggage from their cars, walk to a shuttle stop shelter, and wait for the airport shuttle to drop them at the ticketing counter of the airline they will be flying.

On this particular morning, I am fortunate, not only to get a parking space close to a shelter, but to nab a space right next to one. Woo hoo! This will be a fine trip indeed!

A few days later, my conference over, I fly back to Columbus and take the shuttle back to my car. It occurs to me that the shuttle stop shelters have been painted while I was away. They were red brick when I left, now, returning, they are a bright white. I wonder, briefly, how they were able to paint the side of the shelter with my car parked so close to it.

My drive home takes about twenty minutes. It’s almost 10:00 pm and I’m exhausted. Pat is out of town, so I arrive home to a dark house. The phone begins to ring as I flip the switch to turn on the kitchen lights. And this is the exact moment when my good fortune turns bad.

“Hello?” I answer.

The female voice introduces herself as an airline representative. (I can’t remember now which airline I had flown.) I frown. She informs me that I have taken the wrong suitcase home with me and that I have to return to the airport with the suitcase I’ve taken. What?! I look at the suitcase standing on my kitchen floor. I open the back flap that contains the identification tag. Damnit! That’s not my name!

I get the details of where I need to take the suitcase. I want to cry. I’m so tired and I just got home and now I have to drive all the way back to the airport! I grab my purse, the imposter suitcase and my keys and head back to the airport.

Finally back home, my stomach begins growling. I’m talking a crazy, weird symphony trumpeting from my abdomen. I ignore the music. It’s too late to eat and I am too tired. I lug my overstuffed suitcase up the stairs, heft it onto the bed in the guest room, and begin to unpack.

Where’s my blow dryer? I frantically search the interior of my suitcase. This is a catastrophe! How could I forget to pack my blow dryer?!

I have to go buy one, I have no choice. I have work tomorrow. Crap. Nothing is open at this time of night except the grocery store. I sure hope Kroger sells blow dryers. Whenever I’ve purchased a hair dryer, it has certainly never been at a grocery store.

I go to the top of the stairway to collect my shoes which I had unceremoniously kicked off just a few minutes ago. Again, I collect my purse and head out the door. Please, please, please, let Kroger sell blow dryers!

Kroger is empty. At first, I don’t even see any cashiers. I start down the personal health and grooming aisle, my eyes skimming the shelves, up, down, left, right. Please, please, please, let me find a blow dryer becomes my temporary mantra. And then, Eureka! There, literally covered in dust, sitting on the bottom shelf beneath some hair products, is a box with a picture of a blow dryer on it. Just one, but that’s all I need. It’s mine! I make a grab for it as though there are a hundred people going after the last Cabbage Patch doll at Toys R Us (circa what, 1984?)

The once-invisible cashier has now reappeared. I check out and head to my car. It has started to drizzle.

Out in the car and just sticking my key in the ignition, I’m startled by a knock on my window. I see a middle-aged woman with a kind face. I lower my window.

“There was a guy, in the car parked right there,” she begins, pointing at a small, dark sedan parked in the same aisle as me but a few cars away. “He hit the back of your car when he was trying to park, and then, instead of leaving a note, he went and parked his car over there.

“I saw him walk into Kroger. You might want to write down his license plate number and a description of the car in case he decides to bail. If I were you,” she suggests, “I would take the license information into the service desk at Kroger and ask them to make an announcement asking the owner of the plate to go to the service desk.

“Oh, yeah, the guy is average height, medium build with brown hair and wearing a navy windbreaker. He looked about forty years old.” I was unable to insert a word for fear I would miss some important information she was telling me. “I’m happy to be a witness for you if you need one.” The blessed angel hands me a slip of paper with her name and phone number scrawled on it.

Have you ever met such a Good Samaritan in your life?! She tells me that she had finished shopping and was in her car when she saw the dark sedan hit my car. Any other person would have just gone home. Instead, this kind soul had sat in her car on this dark and now wet night, for me to return to mine. I wish I was that considerate.

After acknowledging my profuse gratitude, the blessed angel leaves. Alone again, I begin to seethe. What the hell?! I curse. I pound my fists onto the steering wheel and then curse again when pain shoots through the sides of my hands from the impact. What else can go wrong?!

I get out of the car to inspect the damage but because of the darkness and rain, I can see very little. I grab a piece of paper and pen from my purse, walk over to the culprit’s car, and write down his plate number. I see by the county name on his plate that he is from out of town.

I really don’t want to have to go through the rigmarole of taking the information to the service desk inside Kroger. Especially since the accused would probably ignore the summons and instead, sneak out of the store and back to his car for a quick getaway. All while I was inside Kroger waiting. What would I say to the guy, anyway? I’ve dedicated most if not all of my life to circumventing any and all forms of confrontation. Tonight is not the night to change my established practices of avoiding conflict. I decide I will report the hit-and-park-somewhere-else car to the local police, and they can confront the bad guy.

I return home and head to the guest room to finish unpacking so I can finally go to bed.

Well, I finish all right. But not before I discover my damn blow dryer hiding beneath a few folded shirts. That’s right. My blow dryer. The one I supposedly forgot in Chicago. I scream like a person seeing her cat being carried out of sight in the mouth of a coyote. I am so, so mad at myself. What a complete idiot!

I have absolutely no intention of returning my new, dusty blow dryer to Kroger either tonight or ever. I storm out of the guest room to get ready for bed.

After work the next day, I drive to the local police station to report the hit and run that happened in the Kroger parking lot . Armed with a witness name and phone number, a description of the car along with a license plate number, not to mention a physical description of my criminal, I am emboldened. That is, until the police officer looks at the almost invisible damage to my car. He looks at me as if to say, “Are you serious?”

He promises to investigate but points out that the license plate is from another county so there’s little they’ll be able to do. I know he’s just placating me. He might as well pat me on the head and hand me a lollipop.

Defeated, I return to my bright blue Ford Taurus and for the first time, notice hundreds of little white dots splattered all over the driver’s side of the car. What the hell?! I remember then about my awesome parking space right next to the airport shuttle stop shelter. The newly painted shelter. The now white shuttle stop shelter. I cringe. I curse. (I’m doing a lot of cussing these days.) I drive home, clenching the steering wheel. I am livid, a boiling kettle of water.

Over the next several days, I hear back from my insurance company about how much they will pay to have the paint dots removed from my car. It’s not much. They suggest I get them rubbed out at a car wash. I hope the dots come out. I don’t want to have to confront the airport authority again to get them to pay for a whole new paint job.

I also hear back from the local police. I can’t remember if I had to call them or they called me. I had really given up on the bad guy ever getting in trouble for his misdeed. The officer tells me the name of the person owning the vehicle and the city (in Ohio) where the suspect lives. He also informs me that they have been in contact with the suspect’s local police department and they had agreed to make a visit to the suspect’s address to question him. I thank the officer and hang up knowing that nothing will ever come of it. Case closed.

And that, my friends, is the end of my sordid tale of a trip that started out so positively and only after a series of unfortunate events, finally ended.